(water sloshing) - Sushi chefs are basically
professional rice-makers, in my humble opinion. It's a never-ending quest, which is something that
I love about sushi. It's the unobtainable perfection, it is the mountain that you
never get to the top of. Welcome to Zilla Sake. (paper tears) (scissor rasps) So, growing up, my parents
taught me to be strong, goal-oriented, high-achieving,
to pay attention to detail. So, this wasabi is from
Oregon Coast Wasabi, which used to be called Frog Eyes, and what's cool about
this one is that, inside, you can see that it has kind of a purple, got a little starburst,
and so when it's grated, it turns a really nice magenta color. My mom used to tell me,
do it right or do it over, and that's something that
is a very valuable thing to remember, because those are really the only two options in sushi, you either do it right, or you do it over. So, at Zilla, we mainly use
products that are from Japan. We do use local purveyors,
suppliers, fisherman, tribal fisherman, but for
me, I think it's important to recognize that, in
doing an ethnic food, there's going to be a
fair amount of sourcing that you have to do from overseas. (utensils clatter) So, our anago comes from Hakata. As far as I know, Zilla is the
only restaurant in Portland who regularly gets eel
shipped fresh over from Japan. (utensils clank) I started making sushi when I was 19. I started in Tempe, Arizona,
kind of serendipitously at a sushi bar called Ichiban. I had a couple of mentors at Ichiban. One was an older gentleman from
Osaka who we called Johnny. From his tutelage, I gained a lot of really important skills. Probably one of the biggest
lessons that Johnny taught me was how to be my own harshest critic. (stirring music) I moved to Hilo, Hawai'i, in 2002 to pursue a linguistics degree at the
University of Hawai'i, Hilo, and after I graduated, I
actually got a job working in fish importing at Hilo Fish Company. So, this madai actually comes clean. Madai have very, very tough scales. They're almost like fingernails. My job was to coordinate
container ships going through different ports in Asia, and
then bring those containers to the state of Hawai'i, offload them, and then sell the product to our clients. It was really valuable to see
the other end of what I do, and the supply end of the chain. This octopus is wild-caught from Portugal. And we need to just...in sake, with salt. So, we're gonna use the
end of the daikon radish, which has this nice natural
handle on the top that we save. And you just kinda, you just go down. (radish thumps) So, I was born in Seoul,
Korea, and I was adopted at six months by American
parents, grew up in Oregon, and I always felt a little
bit halfway in between Asia and the United States,
so when I moved to Hawaii, it was the first time in my
life that I was not a minority. There were a lot of other
Asian people, obviously, a lot of mixed Asian people. In Hawai'i, we say poi dog, all mixed up. Kohada is one of my favorite
types of hikarimono. I think one of the biggest
things that I learned when I was at Hilo Fish Company is that
there are so many people in between either the fisherman
or the farms, overseas, and the sushi chefs at a sushi
bar who are cutting the fish for their customers. This type of cutting is called
hiraki, like a butterfly cut. Kohada is such a beautiful fish, I think. So, when I first learned about Zilla, when I applied for the job, I
thought that I was replacing a head sushi chef, and
then I came to find out, there was no sushi bar. And, it was a great
opportunity for me to be a part of the sushi bar from the ground up. (paper rasps) So, this is the back loin,
so we won't get belly toro. There was no one here to teach me, and so, I was actually the one at Zilla training the chefs that came through, which is also a very good
self-teaching experience. I learned a lot, even from
people that I was training, people that didn't know
anything about sushi coming in. (stirring music) Humility is the cornerstone
of any good sushi chef. Not having a sushi mentor
or someone to train me or look over my shoulder
later on in my career posed its own challenges, but I would say that it really made me be the person who had to look over my own shoulder. (water rushes) The word sushi actually
refers to the vinegared rice, and there are multiple
ways to write it in kanji, but the word itself refers
to rice that has been seasoned with seasoned vinegar. This is a really grounding
part of being a sushi chef. It's humbling to wash rice, you know, we're not cooking it in a cast
iron pot over a fire anymore, but it's something that connects
sushi through the history. For me, rice is the heart of the sushi. It's the most important ingredient, and we actually consider the fish to be the topping for the rice. You can have the best fish in the world, but if you don't have good
sushi rice to go along with it, your sushi will automatically not be good. I didn't plan on settling
in Oregon, necessarily. I actually thought I
was gonna stay in Hawai'i after I graduated from U.H., but I found myself back in Portland, and I have a family here now,
so I plan on staying here. (knife thuds) I've come across many obstacles
in my career, my gender, my ethnicity, not having
someone to train me later on in my sushi journey,
but I think, overall, that experience has made me the sushi chef that I've become today. Japanese bluefin chutoro sashimi with locally grown, fresh-grated wasabi. I've never pouted about it, it's not something that got me angry, it's just something that was motivating for me to work harder to prove myself. Madai from Japan. It's just something that,
for me, was motivating, those type of situations,
to climb my own ladder and my own mountain, and
that's how I got to be the owner of Zilla today. Japanese bluefin akami. House-cooked tako. Kohada from Japan. Anago from Hakata with
fresh-grated yuzu. Young women come through
here that I have been able to train, and it
gives me a lot of happiness knowing that the perseverance
that I've learned in my career is something that I can pass
on to the next generation of sushi chefs that are
just starting out now. (stirring music)
